Chapter XII: Part II: The Social Fabric (6)

But surely this is to overlook the knighthoods of Van Dyck and Lely (both from the Netherlands), to say nothing of Sir Joshua.

The campaign directed against the extravagances of aestheticism by Du Maurier belongs in the main to a later decade, but even in the early 'seventies the vagaries of preciosity had already begun to furnish him with fruitful subjects for genial satire.

FASHION IN DRESS

In the period under review in this volume England was dominated by two monstrosities, the crinoline and the Claimant. Fortunately they were not concurrent or England might have succumbed beneath the double incubus. The former was pronounced "gone" in 1867, the same year in which the arrival and recognition of the so-called Sir Roger Tichborne as the rightful heir was announced in the columns of _Punch_. The historic trial soon loomed large on the horizon, though it did not open till 1871. Of this portent some notice will be found elsewhere. Of the crinoline it is no exaggeration to say that _Punch_ waged war against it for ten solid years; his pages resolve themselves into a sort of _Crinoliniad_; and when the monster fell it was not by force of arms assisted by guile as in the parallel campaign against Troy, but by its own absurdity and through the weariness of its supporters. With _Punch_ it was a positive obsession. The extravagances of the crinoline dominate his "social cuts" from 1857 onwards. In 1858 he tells us that "Fops' Alley" at the opera is to be rechristened "Petticoat Lane"; and that the Ladies' Gallery in the House of Commons is to be enlarged as a concession to the lateral expansion of women's skirts. The popular negro song "Hoop de Dooden Doo" is re-written to fit the prevailing fashion, and a classical lyric, "My Flora," is perverted to suit the same purpose. Even at this early stage, however, _Punch_ seems to have recognized the futility of his crusade. As he puts it:

The more you scoff, the more you jeer,
The more the women persevere
In wearing this apparel queer.

[Sidenote: _Crinoline Absurdities_]

He applauds the railway companies for their alleged determination to charge for ladies' trunks by size, not weight, but adds: "It's no use trying to laugh or reason women out of it (crinoline). In all matters of dress and in that of crinoline especially, the mind female is impervious to ridicule and reason. The only argument to use with them is the _argumentum ad pocketum_."

The last sweet things in hats and walking sticks at Biarritz.]

_Punch_, though pessimistic, was persevering, if inconsistent, and continued to rely largely on the weapon of ridicule, and he had no lack of material. Thus we read in December, 1858:--

Visitors to the Cattle Show, at least those who go in Crinoline,
would do well before they start to read the following short
paragraph, which we extract for their perusal from a country
print:--

"The Show was attended by several of the fair sex, for whose
admission special means of entrance were provided. Through a
pardonable neglect on the part of the Committee, this was neglected
to be done at first, and a highly amusing incident occurred through
the omission. Within a very few minutes of the Show being opened, a
distinguished party of ladies and gentlemen arrived, and on coming
to the turnstile (which was then the only entrance) it was
discovered that the ladies, who we need not say were dressed in
all the amplitude of fashion, could not possibly squeeze through so
limited a space. In this dilemma, as the turnstile could not
possibly be widened to the width that was required, the only course
was, obviously, to throw open the great gates, through which the
ladies, not without a titter, sailed majestically Show-wards in the
wake of the prize beasts."

Ridicule, again, inspires the caricature of crinolines in the park chairs, or the account of children in crinolines. In 1861 _Punch_ describes a child of four at an evening party who was fully six times and a half as broad as she was long, and reads a homily on the danger of implanting such follies in the mind of susceptible youth, since the child is the mother of the woman as well as the father of the man. There is, too, a burlesque picture of a modern governess giving a geography lesson on a globe formed by her own inflated skirts. But often he struck a serious note, and his suggestion of a crinoline hospital was not so absurd in view of frequent accidents, such as the following:--

CRINOLINE AND ITS VICTIMS

Notwithstanding all that _Punch_ has said upon the subject, the
accidents from Crinolines are, it would seem, upon the increase.
Half a score at least have occurred through fire since Christmas,
and several others we could cite have taken place from other
causes. One of the last we saw reported was occasioned by a dress
being caught up by a cab-wheel while the wearer was crossing a
street at the West End. Here the victim was so fortunate as to
escape with merely a bad fracture of her leg; but in most cases the
sufferers have lost their life by their absurdity in wearing the
wide dresses which are now accounted fashionable.

[Sidenote: _Length Succeeds Breadth_]

So the campaign went on for years and years, though _Punch_ was magnanimous enough to record in 1864 that the much-abused monster had been the means of saving a girl's life by acting as a parachute and breaking her fall. In 1865 the fashion was already on the wane, but very long dresses were in vogue, to the great annoyance of _Punch_:--

LADIES AND THEIR LONG TAILS

Crinoline at length is going out, thank goodness! but long,
trailing dresses are coming in, thank badness! In matters of
costume lovely woman rarely ceases to make herself a nuisance; and
the length of her skirt now is almost as annoying as, a while ago,
its width was. _Robes à queue_ they call these draggling dresses;
but it is not at Kew merely that people are tormented by them.
Everywhere you walk, your footsteps are impeded by the ladies, who,
in Pope's phrase, "drag their slow length along" the pathway just
in front of you. "Will anybody tread upon the tail of my
petticoat?" This seems to be the general invitation they now give.
Sad enemies to progress they are, in their long dresses; and a
Reform Bill should be passed to make them hold their tails up.

But the new nuisance was trifling compared with the old, and relief predominated in the "Rhymes to Decreasing Crinoline" published a few months earlier. It was not, however, until 1867 that crinolines practically disappeared in fashionable circles, and that long skirts were curtailed to reasonable dimensions.

Though chiefly preoccupied with skirts, _Punch_ bestowed a good deal of attention on the vagaries of feminine headgear. In 1857 the huge round hats in vogue moved him to protest. They were discredited, in his view, when worn by elderly ladies, but he allowed them the negative merit of having displaced the "ugly." The "dear little Spanish hat, so charming and so much more sensible than a horrid bonnet" shown in the picture of a stout lady of uncertain age, justifies the reservation "on some people." But the hat was entering into a serious competition with the bonnet, and by 1860 the "pork-pie hat," so indelibly associated with Leech's portraits of mid-Victorian girls, was firmly established in favour and gradually ousting the spoon-shaped bonnet which disappeared in 1865. This growing popularity of the hat trimmed with feathers, as opposed to bonnets trimmed with ribbons, had the result of causing considerable distress in the ribbon trade in Coventry. _Punch_, though "no lover of extravagance," found himself accordingly driven to urge his lady readers to flock to their dressmakers and drapers and purchase as many hat-ribbons as possible. They could justify their action by singing in the slightly adapted words of the old song,

All round my hat I wear a new ribbon,
All round my hat a new ribbon every day,
And if anyone should ask of me the reason why I wear it,
"'Tis to help the poor of Coventry who are wanting work," I'll say.

The appeal was followed up a week later by an ingenious and graceful picture of the new Lady Godiva riding through Coventry in a costume composed entirely of ribbons.

[Sidenote: _Chignons_]

Bonnets held their own but in dwindling dimensions, their minuteness being specially noticed in 1867. This is attributed by _Punch_ to the fashion of the chignon, on which he bestows ironic praise in 1869 as needing very small and therefore cheap bonnets. In 1871 "Dolly Varden" hats, flower-trimmed and with one side bent down, named after the character in _Barnaby Rudge_, engage _Punch's_ pencil; a year later Mr. Austin Dobson wrote in _St. Paul's Magazine_: "Blue eyes look doubly blue beneath a Dolly Varden."

The very last thing in chignons.]

Turning from headgear to hairdressing, we find _Punch_ a vigilant critic of _coiffure_. In 1858 he attacks the vagaries of mode as shown in hairdressing _à la Chinoise_ "pulled up by the roots," and the fashion of wearing coins. To judge from Leech's pictures he greatly preferred the simpler style of braids and hair nets. The great event of the mid-'sixties, however, was the advent of the chignon, which proved only second to the crinoline as an incentive to caricature and criticism. In the ironical verses addressed to a "Young Lady of Fashion," the chignon stands first in the list of the artificial enhancements of beauty resorted to half a century back:--

I love thee for thy chignon, for the boss of purchased hair,
Which thou hast on thine occiput the charming taste to wear.
Oh, what a grace that ornament unto thy poll doth lend,
Wound on what seems a curtain-rod with knobs at either end!

I love thee for the roses, purchased too, thy cheeks that deck,
The lilies likewise that adorn thy pearly-powdered neck,
And all that sweet "illusion" that, o'er thy features spread,
Improves the poor reality of Nature's white and red.

I love thee for the muslin and the gauze about thee bound,
Like endive that in salad doth a lobster's tail surround.
And oh! I love thee for the boots thine ankles that protect,
So proper to the manly style young ladies now affect.

The chignon was no new invention, but a revival of a fashion mentioned by the _Lady's Magazine_ for 1783, and described twenty-five years later by Maria Edgeworth as a combination of hair natural and false "plastered together to a preposterous bulk and turned up in a sort of great bag or club." But the fashion attained its apogee in the middle and late 'sixties, and afforded endless opportunities to the pencils of Du Maurier and Sambourne. One of the most ludicrous of the many caricatures to which the habit gave rise is that in which Du Maurier represented a lady riding on a pony with its mane and tail fluffed out to harmonize with her stupendous chignon. Later developments of the chignon are ridiculed by Sambourne in 1871.

[Sidenote: _Madame Rachel_]

The second stanza of the poem quoted above furnishes not an unfair summary of the arts of facial adornment of which that amazing adventuress Madame Rachel was the most notorious and expensive high priestess. Her beginnings were obscure and even ignominious. Her maiden name was Russell, but it is not certain whether she was born near Ballinasloe in Ireland or in London. Her first husband was a chemist's assistant in Manchester, from whom she had probably learned something of the compounding of cosmetics; her second and third husbands were both Jews--James Moses who was lost in the _Royal Charter_, October 26, 1859, and Philip Leverson. She kept a fried-fish shop in Vere Street, Clare Market, for a while, then started as a hair restorer in Conduit Street, and from 1861 to 1868 was in business in New Bond Street under the name of Madame Rachel (probably borrowed from that of the famous tragedian) as an enameller and vendor of cosmetics. She professed, in the phrase eternally associated with her name, to make women "beautiful for ever," but it was a costly process. Under the heading, "The Trials of Beauty," _Punch_, who had referred to her cosmetics as early as the winter of 1858, writes in 1862:--

The wife of a Captain has been called upon to pay near upon £1,000
for having been enamelled by Madame Rachel. Ladies take warning. Be
natural rather than artificial. Never appear in society with a mask
on, no matter how beautiful the mask may be. From the above you
should learn in time how much it may cost you for being
double-faced.

What we _must_ come to before long!]

The warning, however, was unheeded, and Madame Rachel continued to flourish exceedingly for more than five years, living in an elegant house in Maddox Street and paying £400 in 1867 for a box at the opera. The first crash came in 1868, when she was tried for swindling Mrs. Borradaile, the widow of a colonel in the Madras Cavalry, out of £5,300 on the pretence of making her "beautiful for ever" and fitting her to be the wife of Viscount Ranelagh. In September of that year she was sentenced to five years' penal servitude, and she was burnt in effigy on Guy Fawkes' day. In the following March her house, furniture and effects came to the hammer, and _Punch's_ description affords a good clue to the extent of her profits:--

The lady's business having been knocked down by the Judges, her
effects are about to be knocked down by the auctioneer. The
catalogue and sale bills are quite overpowering to the imagination.
The drawing-rooms and principal apartments are said to "present
splendour and magnificence difficult to describe." There are
candelabra (brass and lacquer probably) formerly belonging to the
Emperor Napoleon, and incense-burners once the property of the King
of Delhi! "Dispersed through the house are numerous works of Art
and articles of virtu, many of them presentations from Madame
Rachel's distinguished patronesses."

[Sidenote: _Fashions in Coiffure_]

_Punch_ headed his remarks "Madame Rachel's Last Appearance," but the heading was premature. Released on a ticket-of-leave in 1872 Madame Rachel boldly renewed her operations in Duke Street, Portland Place, in 1873, and continued them till 1878, when she was sentenced a second time to five years' penal servitude for swindling another client, and died in Woking Prison on October 12, 1880. The curious may turn for further details to the reminiscences of Serjeant Ballantine and Montagu Williams. Both Serjeant Ballantine and Montagu Williams appeared for the prosecution in the Borradaile case. There were two trials: in the first, held in August, the jury disagreed. It is perhaps not unfair to say that the heavy sentence passed by Mr. Commissioner Kerr was due more to Madame Rachel's demerits and her record than to the merits of the case. But she had not merely obtained money under false pretences: she was a forger and a blackmailer as well. Ballantine, who could not be accused of squeamishness, had known of her in earlier days and describes her as "one of the most filthy and dangerous moral pests that have existed in my time and within my observation."[34] Montagu Williams, who gives a full account of the trial, calls her a "wicked old woman," but contents himself with observing that the case "afforded a striking illustration of the vanity of some women, and of what tricks can be played upon them by the artful."[35] Madame Rachel does not appear in the D.N.B., though less remarkable impostors have found a niche in that comprehensive temple of native talent, and her fame was not confined to one hemisphere. One of the springs on the shores of Lake Rotorua in New Zealand was named "The Madame Rachel Bath" in virtue of its medicinal and rejuvenating qualities.

[Footnote 34: _Some Experiences of a Barrister's Life._]

[Footnote 35: _Leaves of a Life._]

From the "Journal des Coiffeurs."

(_The ladies have already begun._)]

In 1866 the rage for dyeing the hair auburn seems to have been at its height. "Mr. Frizzle," a _coiffeur de dames_, is represented in one of Du Maurier's pictures as saying to a customer, "Black hair is never admitted into really good society." Enlarging on this theme in another place in the same volume, _Punch_ observes that the maxim "Never say Dye" is completely abandoned, and suggests daily changes of complexion to suit the dresses worn. In 1864 we read of small dogs being dyed to match their mistresses' colouring! By 1867 the pendulum seems to have swung in the opposite direction and brunettes are again in vogue. The picture (also by Du Maurier) of fashionable ladies with short hair can hardly be taken seriously; it is probably not more than an unconscious prophecy of the "bobbing" habit of recent years. In 1869 _Punch_ was much exercised by learning, on the authority of an American paper, that "nearly all the brilliant complexions seen among the fashionable women of New York are the result of eating arsenic. Since the introduction of the blonde fashion, arsenic-eating has become almost a mania." Tirades against tight-lacing date back to 1859, but they culminated in the ponderous irony of the "Wanton Warning to Vanity" published ten years later:--

Indeed the _Morning Post_ ought to be ashamed of itself. That
journal, which we used to call our fashionable contemporary,
publishes a paragraph, headed "Tight-Lacing," which reports the
particulars of an inquest held at the College Arms, Crowndale Road,
Camden Town, on the body of a young woman, aged only nineteen, and
whereby, if they see it, our dear girls who take in such
instructive journals as the _Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine_ will
be terrified to no purpose by the information that--

"She was out three hours with a perambulator, in which was one
child, and as she neared her destination she fell down insensible.
She was taken to 10, Polygon, where upon examination by Dr. Smellie
she was found quite dead. It was discovered that she was very
tightly-laced, and Dr. Smellie stated that death was caused by
effusion of blood on the brain, caused by fatty heart, accelerated
by compression of the chest produced by tight-lacing. The jury
returned a verdict in those terms."

This statement, so inconsistently published by our once, and, we
hitherto supposed, our still fashionable contemporary, is
calculated to have a most unfashionable effect, namely, that of
deterring girls from following the revived fashion of lacing as
tight as they can stand, and tighter than they are sometimes able
to go. But a propensity, which seems a law of their nature,
happily compels them, for the most part, to follow the fashion
regardless of consequences. The typical and average woman can no
more deviate from the dress of the day than an animal can choose to
change its skin or its spots. There is no fear that any girls
accustomed to tight-lacing will ever be induced to relinquish that
practice which renders them such delightful objects to one another,
if ridiculous and repulsive to stupid men, by any such nonsense as
a report of the verdict of a coroner's jury ascribing death to the
effect of tight-lacing in accelerating fatty degeneration of the
heart.

Does not tight-lacing and high heels give a charming grace and dignity to the female figure?]

[Sidenote: _The Grecian Bend_]

High heels are not noticeable in Leech's pictures or before the middle 'sixties. The "manly style" of boots mentioned in the lines of the "Young Lady of Fashion" quoted above probably refer to the stout laced-up "Balmorals" which Frederick Locker refers to in his _London Lyrics_. The advent of tailor-made garments for women in the summer of 1864 is looked upon as a curiosity. Towards the end of the period under review a mode of carriage known as the "Grecian Bend," celebrated in a comic song of the time, is more than once noted and caricatured in _Punch_; faint echoes of the "Grecian Bend" still linger in the memories of the elderly; the "Roman Fall" is merely the shadow of a name. By the 'seventies the æsthetic movement had already begun to exert an influence on dress, but it was confined to a small coterie, to the _précieux_ and _précieuses_ who worshipped old china and wore waistless dresses of sage green. On the general question of "the Influence of costume and fashion on High Art," which was discussed in a manifesto issued by "The Artists of the Nineteenth Century," _Punch_ wrote sensibly enough:--

The declaration is signed by a great number of eminent men at home
and abroad, and its point is to insist that people of the present
day dress so hideously that they will not make pictures. A
transitional change is recommended, and the Declarers
affectionately remind the public that so long as they make Guys of
themselves at the instigation of tailors and milliners, portraits
have no value except as family memorials, whereas, if we dressed
properly, the artists would make us into tableaux which the whole
world should admire. All this is perfectly true, but what is to be
done? How are we to extricate ourselves from the tyranny of the
tailor and the milliner? This the Declarers do not tell us, nor was
it to be expected perhaps that they should advise us how to conduct
a rebellion. But why do they not tell us how they would like us to
dress? Men, for instance. Are they to come out with a choice array
of colour, and with a picturesquely cut garb, and that general
ampleness and nobleness in treatment of costume, which bespeaks the
grand and heroic in the wearer?

[Sidenote: _The Briton Abroad_]

At this point _Punch_ deviates into absurdity. But the main argument is sound. As a transition, however, to the subject of men's dress, another deliverance serves our purpose even better. _Punch_ loved to criticize and even carp at his countrymen and countrywomen, but he did not easily suffer any infringement of his prerogative. And so, when a correspondent of _The Times_ fell foul of the dowdiness of Englishmen and Englishwomen abroad, he was up in arms at once:--

_The Times_ abuses John Bull, and Madame son Épouse, for going
about on their travels got up as Guys--for shocking foreign
prejudices, and showing their contempt for foreign opinion, by
sporting eccentric shooting-coats, flaming flannel shirts, reckless
wide-awakes--and worse still on the ladies' part, by the general
shabbiness and ugliness of their travelling toilettes and headgear.

Now, making every allowance for the desperate necessities of
newspaper writers in the dead season, and admitting that British
travellers--male and female--include specimens both of the Guy and
the Gorilla, _Mr. Punch_ must put in his protest against any such
wholesale indictment as this of his compatriots en voyage. On the
contrary he is prepared to maintain, after surveying mankind from
Calais to Calatafimi ... that, as a rule, the wearer of the best
travelling suit (for stuff, cut, and condition together), the
cleanest shirt, the least ragamuffin or ridiculous hat, the
soundest and shapeliest foot-covering, is a Briton.

Englishmen turn neater and sweeter out of a railway carriage after
a night's rattle, restlessness and frowst than any other people;
they are more presentable, more like gentlemen, after an Alpine
scramble among glacier and moraine, crevasse and couloir; they
present better brushed hair, and cleaner hands and faces and whiter
linen at the Table d'hôte under difficulties, and fall into less
profound abysses of misery and degradation in sea-going steamers,
than the natives of any other country.

I, _Punch_, am speaking now of the men. For the ladies--bless
them!--I am compelled to admit they don't understand dress as an
art so well as their French sisters. Millinery and dressmaking have
their home and headquarters in France, just as cooking has; and for
the same reason--because the inferiority of the raw material makes
the elaborate and well-studied dressing of it a matter of sheer
necessity.

But, apart from their national shortcoming in the art of dress, I
maintain that Englishwomen, on their travels, deserve as much good
said of them as Englishmen. Bless their fresh faces, and smooth
hair, and clean cuffs and collars! In these particulars, what
French or German woman can hold the candle to 'em?

I admit that the plain British female looks plain on her travels,
and maybe dowdy ... But this I will maintain, that an attractive
Englishwoman loses less of her attractiveness under the necessities
and accidents of travel than any of her Continental rivals. She has
a quality of purity and freshness about her which seems to repel
all soil, whether material or moral, as the oil in the duck's
tail-gland drives off the water-drops from his plumage; and, as a
rule, her clothes, and her way of wearing them, have the same
merits of freshness and purity in comparison with those of her
rivals.

This, then, is the first proposition I am prepared to maintain
against all comers: that English travellers, of both sexes, are, as
a rule, the best-dressed travellers in the world.

My next proposition is like unto it, viz.: that the English abroad
are the best-mannered travellers, and at home the best-mannered
dealers with travellers, to be found in the circle of civilized
nations.

This is John Jones, who has kindly selected Mrs. de Cotillon's _Thé Dansant_, to display his idea of what the alterations in evening dress (said to be meditated by a certain R-y-l P-rs-n-ge) ought to be.]

[Sidenote: _Masculine Dress_]

Throughout the period dealt with in the previous volume man, in _Punch_, was the predominant partner in the domain of dress. From 1857 onwards the balance is handsomely redressed in favour of the women. And as _Punch_ was staffed by men, we may fairly attribute this change to the standardizing of male attire which dates from the middle of the nineteenth century. The difference between the dress of men to-day and in 1860 is immensely less than that between the dress of women at the same two dates. Beaver hats were still worn in 1858; they are even now exhibited in the shop front of a well-known hatter's in St. James's Street; but the silk chimney pot had already come to stay. The evening dress suit was indistinguishable from that now worn. There was not much difference in the cut of morning coats. Only in the "nether integuments" is the flux of fashion really marked. "Peg-top" trousers were in vogue in 1858 and for a few years subsequently, and _Punch_ attributes their shape to mimicry of the crinoline, though in one passage he professes to derive it from the _contours_ of the Cochin China fowl. The "Peg-top," however, did not last. It was otherwise with the introduction of knickerbockers, so-called from the resemblance to the knee-breeches of the Dutchmen in Cruickshank's illustrations to Washington Irving's _History of New York_.

_Enter_ Mamma and Aunt Ellen.

MAMMA (to old woman): "Pray, have you met two ladies and a gentleman?"

OLD WOMAN: "Well, I met three people--but, la! there, I can't tell ladies from gentlemen nowadays--when I was a gal, etc., etc."]

FIRST SWELL: "A-a-wah! Waw! Waw! How did you like him?"

SECOND DITTO: "Waw-waw-waw. No fellaw evaw saw such a fellaw. Gwoss cawicature-waw!"]

In a letter to _The Times_ in May, 1859, Lord Elcho recommends "nickerbockers"--so he spells the word--as a substitute for trousers for volunteers. Charles Kingsley in the same year derived them from country-made--and badly made--puffed trunk-hose. But their utility and convenience for country wear and sport were soon established, though the dreadful abbreviation "Knickers" did not come into use for some twenty years. The shortening of ladies' dresses and the bagginess of men's knickerbockers afforded _Punch_ some excuse for professing to be unable to distinguish the sexes at a distance, but the actual assumption of knickerbockers by women belonged to a later generation.

[Sidenote: _Lord Dundreary_]

It is rather in the fashion of wearing their hair than in their dress that the changes effected in the appearance of men in the last sixty years can be best studied. Beards came in after the Crimean War, but they were not universally popular. The Bishop of Rochester took up so strong a line on the subject in 1861 that _Punch_ was moved to protest:--

Good Doctor Wigram (Rochestere),
At Parsons' beards is raving:
We sadly fear that we shall hear
The Bishop's _head_ needs shaving.

But whiskers were the great feature of the 'sixties. They had been "ambrosial" before, but now the thing became a monstrosity in its profuse luxuriance. For this was the age of "Piccadilly Weepers," and of Lord Dundreary, the eccentric stage peer created by Sothern in _Our American Cousin_. Sothern, be it remembered, was a hunting-man and a _persona grata_ in fashionable circles; and allowing for the element of caricature in his impersonation, it was at least based on firsthand knowledge of the type satirized. There is an interesting notice of the first production at the Haymarket of _Our American Cousin_ in which Lord Dundreary is described as "a double eye-glassed dandy, with dyed whiskers which he paws and throws over his shoulder," but the critic admits that in spite of all Mr. Sothern's "funny and fantastic caricaturing, there is a something true to nature in his almost every touch." The hold that Sothern's impersonation took upon public fancy is shown by the fact that for several years _Punch_ adopted "Dundreary" as a synonym for a vacuous, solemn, well-bred and prodigiously whiskered dandy, and in the Preface to Vol. xlii. Lord Dundreary is introduced as interlocutor in the usual dialogue.

Tailors' pseudo-classical nomenclature was already a frequent theme with _Punch_. In the same year _Punch_ quotes a tailor's advertisement of a "Negligé Milled Tweed suit, consisting of cape jacket, vest and trousers for £2 2s. 0d.," which arouses the envy of the post-war Englishman. Hair-brushing by machinery is noted as a novelty in the autumn of 1863; we trust that the customers contrived to keep their whiskers out of the way of the brush. For the rest, we may briefly note the advent of the "Ulster" in 1871, and the prevalence of the single eye-glass in 1873.

SPORT AND PASTIME

GRANDPAPA: "Bless his heart--just like me! Spare the _Nim_rod--spoil the child, I say."]

In the region of sport fox-hunting continues to dominate the scene. Leech's pictures are largely devoted to satirizing cockney sportsmen, but they render full justice to the enterprise and intrepidity of the younger generation and of hard-riding young ladies. He is less happy or at any rate less genial in ridiculing the irregularities of the "Mossoo" in the hunting field. The exploits and adventures of the ubiquitous Mr. Briggs form an agreeable pendant and supplement to the novels of Surtees. Mr. Briggs was not an aristocrat, but he was more of a gentleman if less of a personality than Jorrocks. But Leech's premature death left a tremendous gap, for both in humour and draughtsmanship the artists who took his place as delineators of the chase were immeasurably his inferiors. In connexion with the "noble animal" we may note that the advent of Rarey, the famous horse-tamer, was warmly welcomed by _Punch_ and Leech in 1858. The possibilities of the treatment are developed in a variety of ways, but there is more than mere burlesque in the suggestion that it could be profitably applied to stablemen and horsebreakers. And here we may note a crude foreshadowing of winter-sports in Leech's picture of the frozen-out foxhunter who builds a "treboggin" and, with his groom seated behind, careers down hill and across country in a machine about 12 feet long and not 2 feet wide with a splash-board in front.

Sporting Militaire recalls to mind his Canadian experiences (the ground being deep with snow), builds a treboggin, and for the moment ceases to swear at the frost, or to regret the six hunters he has eating their heads off in the stable.]

[Sidenote: _In Praise of the Ring_]

_Punch_ was in the main a supporter of "muscular Christianity" and had already noted, with more sympathy than hostility, the encouragement of boxing as an integral part of the education of the ingenuous youth. Disraeli's Parliamentary duel with Palmerston in 1858 is described in pugilistic terms, in which the victory is given to the former "on points." But, in view of his generally humane and humanitarian outlook, he had hardly prepared us for his remarkable eulogy of the Prize Ring in the year 1860. For it was in that year that the historic fight took place between the American Heenan (the "Benicia Boy") and Tom Sayers at Farnborough on April 17, and it was chronicled at full length in _Punch_. "The Fight of Sayerius and Heenanus: A Lay of Ancient London" in the style of Macaulay occupies a whole page. Its chief interest to modern readers resides in the fact that it is "supposed to be recounted to Great-grand-children, April 17, A.D. 1920, by an Ancient Gladiator." The narrative is put in the mouth of "Crawleius" well known "in the _Domus Savilliana_[36] among the sporting men," presumably a relative real or imaginary of Peter Crawley, a well-known prize fighter. But the speaker did a gross injustice to the next generation but one when he wrote:--

'Tis but some sixty years since
The times whereof I speak,
And yet the words I'm using
Will sound to you like Greek.
What know ye, race of milksops,
Untaught of the P.R.,
What stopping, lunging, countering,
Fibbing or rallying are?

What boots to use the _lingo_
When you have not the _thing_?
How paint to _you_ the glories
Of Belcher, Cribb, or Spring,
To _you_, whose sire turns up his eyes
At mention of the Ring?

[Footnote 36: Savile House, on the north side of Leicester Square, originally the residence of Sir George Savile, Burke's friend, was in its latter days rebuilt as a place of entertainment and became a resort of Bohemians and fast men about town. It was burned down in 1865 and the site is now occupied by the Empire Theatre.]

The train journey to Farnborough in the grey dawn, the company, and the fight itself are, however, described with spirit:--

Not only fighting covies,
But sporting swells besides--
Dukes, Lords, M.P.'s and Guardsmen,
With county beaks besides;
And tongues that sway our Senators
And hands the pen that wield
Were cheering on the Champions
Upon that morning's field.

We pass over the details of the fight--how Sayers was floored nine times, and had his right arm crippled; how Heenan had both eyes put in mourning--to come to the last stage:--

Two hours and more the fight had sped,
Near unto ten it drew,
But still opposed--one-armed to blind--
They stood, the dauntless two.
Ah me! that I have lived to hear
Such men as ruffians scorned,
Such deeds of valour brutal called,
Canted, preached down and mourned!
Ah, that these old eyes ne'er again
A gallant mill shall see!
No more behold the ropes and stakes,
With colours flying free!
But I forget the combat--
How shall I tell its close,
That left the Champion's belt in doubt
Between those well-matched foes?
Fain would I shroud the tale in night,--
The meddling Blues[37] that thrust in sight,--
The ring-keepers o'erthrown;--
The broken ring,--the cumbered fight,--
Heenanus' sudden, blinded flight,--
Sayerius pausing, as he might,
Just when ten minutes used aright
Had made the fight his own!

[Sidenote: _Bull Fight at Islington_]

This curious document, valuable as contemporary evidence, worthless as prophecy, serves to show how strangely _Punch's_ humanitarianism was leavened and influenced by primitive instincts in the domain of sport.

[Footnote 37: Policemen.]

Pigeon-shooting and bull-fighting were another matter altogether. In 1870 an abortive attempt was made to introduce the latter at the Agricultural Hall, Islington, and the Islington-Spanish bull-fight is treated with a happy mixture of ridicule and contempt in a contribution to _Punch's_ "Evenings from Home." The proceedings appear to have been tame enough, and the bulls were probably "doped," yet enough of the real thing remained to warrant the hostile reception which the entertainment received. At its close the "Islington Spaniards" dispersed to the Islington public-houses. _Punch_ returned to the subject a month later. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals had interfered to good purpose. The Islington bull-fighters had been summoned before a magistrate and fined, and their "entertainment" had been stopped. _Punch_ seized the occasion to add a comment which, on the very day on which, in 1921, I write these lines, is as timely as it was more than fifty years ago:--

From Islington to Wormwood Scrubbs is not far, and it is much to be
feared by the tame-pigeon-shooting nobility and gentry that the
officers of an impartial Association, vigilant to protect poor
animals from cruelty, will as soon as possible be down upon the Gun
Club.

ENTHUSIASTIC CRICKETER: "Ah, last season was a good one! I'd both eyes blacked in one match, and two fingers smashed in the return match the same week! But give me 1870 over again. I got the ball on my forehead at 'short leg,' and was senseless for three-quarters of an hour!"]

[Sidenote: _Cricket and Football_]

Turning to cricket, we find that "over-hand bowling flung from the elbow" was mentioned by _Punch_ as a novelty in the late 'fifties. Cricket was still played in tall hats at that time; but by the 'sixties caps had come in. The dangers of the game are a not infrequent subject of comment, and, before the days of billiard-table pitches, the ball was capable of a good deal of awkward bumping; but to judge from _Punch's_ pictures the resultant contusions were regarded with equanimity by the players as part of the day's work or play. Cricket was extending its domain, and _à propos_ of the establishment of clubs at Lisbon and Oporto _Punch_ quotes an entertaining account of a game between these clubs by a Lisbon sporting journalist for the instruction of his countrymen. The incident is taken by _Punch_ as an occasion for suggesting international games of cricket: Turks and Chinamen, Dutch and Japanese. The Dutch have long been votaries of cricket; and though it has not caught on with the Japanese and Chinese, both these races have of late years cultivated lawn tennis with considerable success. Here, then, as so often happens, a mock prophecy is fulfilled in a way in which the prophet never expected. A critical year in the annals of Lord's was reached in 1864 when there was a danger of the ground being sold for building purposes. A sum of £10,000 was needed to secure the interests of cricket, and _Punch_, in an imaginary dialogue between a countryman and a cockney, represents the former as ready to contribute 5s. to avoid a national disgrace and "zave Lard's cricket ground."

References to football are confined to comments, mostly humorous but occasionally serious, on the practice of shinning or hacking. The Rules of the "West Shynnington Football Club" are conveniently used as a vehicle for a number of bad puns, but the trials of the modern referee are foreshadowed in the suggestion that "a Police Magistrate should always be in attendance to dispose of all charges made by players." _Punch_ in more serious mood discerns in the letter of "A Surgeon" to _The Times_ the disastrous results of hacking as then permitted by the Rugby code. "Hacking," in _Punch's_ view, was simply an unfair form of fighting and should be abolished.

The outstanding event in rowing circles during these years was the famous race between the Oxford and Harvard fours on August 27, 1869. _Punch_ celebrated the victory of Oxford in a notice giving the names of those who took part in the contest, congratulating Oxford, and wishing health to both crews, the accompanying cartoon representing a gigantic brawny John Bull shaking hands with a muscular but comparatively slim Uncle Sam, both in rowing trim, with the legend "Well Rowed All!" _Punch_, as umpire, remarks: "Ha, dear boys, you've only to pull together to lick all the world!" The sentiment is better than the treatment. Unluckily the race led to some acrimonious comment in the New York papers on British sportsmanship, and _Punch_, in his rejoinder, was more vigorous than polite. River "aquatics" have not always been free from recrimination. The origin of the famous retort to bargees, "Who ate puppy pie under Marlow Bridge?" is obscure; but it is mentioned as far back as the Almanack for 1858.

LEONORA: "Dear! Dear! How the arrow sticks!"

CAPTAIN BLANK (with a sigh of the deepest): "It does, indeed!"]

[Sidenote: _Croquet and Flirtation_]

"Golf Sticks" are alluded to in January, 1858, but during the rest of this period I find no further mention of golf. Of social pastimes archery is still in favour, but croquet is by far the most frequently referred to. To judge from the pictures, croquet, then in its unscientific infancy, was played on lawns innocent of mowing machines or scythes. It was mainly an excuse for flirtation between Charles and Clara; and the cheating earlier mentioned was regarded as quite fair game. _Punch_ dealt with it in a serial poem of heroic proportions in the year 1863. This epic--for it was little less--ran to seven numbers, but it is not memorable apart from its length. When the Croquet Tournament was held at Wimbledon in 1870, _Punch_ was ready to acknowledge the presence of Queens of Beauty, but could not accord the men players a higher title than that of Carpet Knights.

CHORUS OF OFFENDED MAIDENS: "Well! If Clara and Captain de Holster are going on in that ridiculous manner--we may as well leave off playing."]

MISS MAUD: "How do we stand?"

CAPTAIN LOVELACE: "They are six to our love; and 'love' always means nothing, you know."

MISS MAUD: "Always?"]

[Sidenote: _Lawn Tennis_]

"Aunt Sally"--alleged to have been introduced by the Duke of Beaufort--is portrayed as a novel adjunct to the amenities of garden parties in 1860 by Leech. Roller-skating came in about 1873, and about the same time lawn tennis having survived its early name of "Sphairistikè," began to attract the attention of _Punch's_ artists. The implements employed have a prehistoric appearance, but the pastime, thought still in its insular, garden-party and "pat-ball" stage, inspired some graceful lines in 1874:--

LAWN TENNIS

Now the long shadows of September come,
And idle for a time the scribbler's pen is,
He passes from the Town's discordant hum,
From garrulous gossip of the kettle-drum,[38]
From orators who should have been born dumb,
To watch upon green lawns the girls play tennis.

Robins are trilling in the faded trees,
The flitting swallows of their voyage chatter,
Testing their wings before they dare the seas,
For Nile's dun marge or blue-girt Cyclades;
The sportsman's shots come frequent on the breeze,
The flying balls keep up a pleasant clatter.

Croquet's a merry game for those who flirt
(Who doesn't, pray--_Punch_, poet, peer, or parson?),
But Tennis, when the ladies are alert,
Follow the swift ball with a looped-up skirt,
Strike it on high with graceful arm expert,
Burns up the masculine heart with sudden arson.

So, pour some icy fluid in a glass
Tinged with deep mulberry stain, true work of Venice:
And _Mr. Punch_ will let the soft hours pass,
Watching with tranquil eyes each lovely lass
Flit like an Oread o'er the smooth green grass,
And win his old heart as she wins at Tennis.

[Footnote 38: "Drum"--a crowded social reception--dates back to the days of Pope. The Victorian "kettle-drum" was a tea-party.]

_A complete Index will be found in the Fourth Volume._

PRINTED BY

CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE,

LONDON, E.C.4

F100.621